Water From The Rock

When the Israelites were wandering in the desert, they never lacked for anything. Quail bombarded them from the heavens when they missed meat, daily bread awaited them each morning as they stepped out into the new day, and water gushed from a rock when they were thirsty. Their shoes and clothing never wore out in forty years.

We see the miracles and we think how incredible it all is, and it is. But what a journey in surrender these people were walking! There was no stability except the knowledge that God is faithful, and able, and mighty to save. Yet despite His track record in proving this, we are still sinful, human, fallen creatures who hate it when things are out of our control and there is nothing we can do about it, don't we?

Our journey, too, has been full of incredible Only-God provision moments. We have learned and are learning what it means to live a life of full surrender and trust. We have come a long way, but by no means have we arrived, we probably never will. The spiritual life after all is one of continuous challenge and growth in faith, in surrender and in holiness. No pain, no gain as they say.

So as I lay my stones on the altar and share the highlights of our journey, I also must sometimes take a moment to lay down a stone of burden that we carry, to confess that like Pilgrim, we too sometimes find ourselves with a heavy pack that we must lay down at the cross. So here are my stones, I lay them down, I raise my white flag, I surrender all to Him.

When we first arrived in Italy we were classified as independent contractors for tax purposes. This is because we are not technically "employees" of MSC Canada. This puts us in the worst possible tax bracket in Italy because 1. it does not let us claim any ministry expenses so we must pay full tax on 100% of our income, and 2. it does not allow us to qualify for any benefits at all.

Because of this, we started questioning whether it wouldn't be in our best interests financially to join a paramissionary organization here in Italy that would give us "employee" status to the Italian government. Yes it would cost us a 4% admin fee but that would be made up from the child support checks we would then qualify to receive AND it would allow us to have a separate expense account and therefore lower our income, thus lower our taxes. With the green light from our leadership team in Canada we went ahead with this.

Bureaucracy in Italy is not easily avoided. Complication after complication has met us since we made this switch. Besides the 4% admin fee we need to pay another 6% to make up the "employer contributions", because as a missions agency, they don't have income so of course this money has to come out of the missionaries own support. On top of that, we learned that unlike in Canada, we can not file all our ministry expenses, but only Pietro's portion. So for example, if and when we come home on home assignment we can only claim Pietro's airfare. Also, we won't qualify for child support until NEXT year because LAST year more than 30% of our income was as a non-employed status. Lastly, we just learned this past week that our Italian agency can not pay us more than x number of dollars per month paycheck. About 1,000 euros less than our monthly living expenses. What does this mean? Our income is less, and our expenses are substantially more. So the pressure has mounted and stress has ensued.

Different "solutions" have been presented to us. Our Italian agency can take over our rental contract and utilities and pay them out of our expense account rather than us paying them out of our paycheck, it would still be claimable income, but not funneled through our paycheck (does your head hurt yet, ours does). The problem with this is that to change all our contracts will cost us 1,000 euros and if later we decided to leave the Italian agency it would cost us that much again to change it back. We just did this twice in the past year because of our move. Then we have the looming cost of furlough flights that add another huge expense and yet we know furlough is as much an important part of this journey as getting here was. Do not worry, fear not, be bold and courageous. These are the words that play in our heads and that we try hard (white knuckle hard) to live by.

That's the physical practical explanation of what we are dealing with, mentally  and spiritually we feel like God is challenging us. Convicting us. In a way I feel like Sara when she took matters into her own hands and tried to "help" God fulfill his promise of an heir. God doesn't need our "help" to make things financially feasible any more than He needed Sara to arrange for a roundabout pregnancy. And yet that is what we have been trying to do ever since we got here. Find a  way to "save God" money.

It's a fine line between being a good steward of God's (and your) money and surrendering to God's sovereignty in the desert. A fine line between trying to squeeze water from the rock or trusting in the One who can make it flow.

Waxworks

I remember a breakthrough moment I had in my past, when six months into life with our fourth child I thought every cry for food in the middle of the night was the cry that would undo me.  I remember crying and crying and waking up with audible pleas on my tongue begging God to give me rest.  

Pietro gently encouraged me to change the focus of my prayer. To stop praying for the change of the outward circumstance but to pray for God to give me the strength and endurance and patience necessary to rise to the task and to get through the next day and the next, and the next. 

Maybe the greater miracle is not the answer to ones prayer for the change of circumstances, but the work that God does within when the circumstances don’t change. When the going is tough and the obstacles are many and I am tired and unraveled and realize there are only two ways this can go. The same sun that melts the wax can harden clay. 

When the heat is up and the pressure is on, I can be melted like wax and allow myself to be molded into whatever shape He chooses to pour me into, something He guarantees will be good and lovely and of benefit to Him.  Or I can dry up into an unpliable, twisted, gnarled vessel of hardened clay, prone to crack and shatter when battered. 

I am prone to harden, but I hate the cold, rough brittleness of dried clay.  Oh, I want to learn to melt into something soft, warm and pliable. To learn in the melting that circumstances should not and could not sway my resolve to pursue a life filled with grace, peace, joy , patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control by God’s grace at work in me. That these characteristics can become fragrant essential oils stirred into the mix of me plus my circumstances plus my response to equal under the craftsmanship of His hand  a waxwork that is far bigger and better and more beautiful  than life as I currently know it.

The Velvet Vice

I heard about the velvet vice a few weeks ago in a Chip Ingram video. He used it to very briefly refer to God's pattern of pressure and release on our lives. It is a remarkable analogy and has really helped me recognize the gift of pressure and cause me to explore it further in my own mind. It is not a pleasurable experience to feel the tightening of the vice. We stiffen, buck, twist and turn trying to evade it. And yet James 1:2 refers to this pressure as something we should consider "pure joy" or as the Message says, a "sheer gift";

"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith is forced into the open and shows its true colors. 

Your faith is forced into the open. Somewhere inside us, under all the fears and insecurities and anxieties lies something that God has gifted to each of us when we first opened our ears and hearts and lives to Him.  It is the heartbeat of our walk with Him, and without it is impossible to please Him (Heb 11:6).

I have to admit I squirm when people refer to my faith and pair it with words like "inspiring". As if I possess the kind of faith it takes to walk this road, when really... my daily life oozes with faithlessness. In much the same way that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act in spite of it, so it is with faith. We are not (yet) people of great faith. This is not a fun experience for us and while we seek to keep our courage and cling to peace like a lifeline, most of the time I feel like I am floundering in an open ocean being kept afloat by nothing more than the knowledge that He is sovereign and He will not let us drown. A truth I need to remind myself of daily.

Daily I struggle with multiple variations of "what if's" and feel panic begin in my chest and rise to my throat when I contemplate the uncharted (for us, we know He holds the master map) territory ahead. Daily the questions how and when and where and who  tumble around in my weary mind and daily I have to re-surrender them, take a big shaky breath and remind myself that the faith walk requires us to let go of the need to know and embrace the two simple commands to trust and obey.

As I contemplate the pressure and release pattern of the velvet vice I come to see that as the pressure mounts, our faithlessness is forced to the surface first, as though the fingers of God are squeezing out a sliver of deadwood. And as we submit to having the ugly forced into the open, behind it the pressure is forming something beautiful. Faith like a diamond.  Just as a diamond can't form void of pressure, my faith can not be refined without it either.

To view faith as the diamond that God is forming in me that will sparkle for eternity in the light of His glory brings a quickening to my heart. How can one forget the moment the velvet box was opened and we were presented with a diamond in a setting of gold and the question that set our hearts to pounding? To view my life as an I do, and my faith as the diamond pledge to the lover of my soul changes how I respond to pressure. Instead of seeking to squeeze my way out of it, I will submit to His intentions to squeeze the impurities out of me.

"So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well developed, not deficient in any way." James 1:4